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Food, Culture and Society
Director: Asori Soto
After ten years living as an expat in the United States, Asori Soto decides to return to his homeland of Cuba to search for the missing flavors of his childhood. This is a journey to discover culinary traditions long thought lost due to the hardship that Cuba survived after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Cuban Food Stories is a unique film about food, society, and culture on the island of Cuba. Through nine stories, Asori Soto explores the present culinary landscape of his homeland and provides a glimpse into what the future may hold. It is a personal road-trip adventure all around the island to discover the most authentic tales behind the Cuban cuisine.
The film gives unprecedented access to regions so remote that one can only arrive by raft, horseback, or swimming. A journey that will leave your mouth watering as we go from the middle of nowhere to the big cities and rediscover the culinary roots of an exciting Cuba in a time of change.
DVD / 2018 / 82 minutes
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By Bryan Law
New technologies and scientific discoveries have given rise to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). While such advancements are usually considered forward steps, traditional, organic farmers have been under attack by large corporate farming interests seeking to dominate the food industry. Family farms, and specifically organic operations, are being forced out of business and pushed out of the way in pursuit of corporate profits.
Large chemical companies (Monsanto and Syngenta as examples) own patents on their GMO technology and focus much of their efforts on suing smaller farmers for patent infringement. Traditional, organic farmers, have consistently been under attack by these large corporate farming interests, who seek to dominate the food industry and run family farms out of business.
OF THE LAND looks at our current food supply as well as a variety of organic options available to consumers who want to support sustainable farming methods. It is not just about the fight, it is about potential solutions and available options. It is about choice, family, children and future. OF THE LAND looks at a variety of smaller, organic farming models, and traditional farming methods as options to combat the new GMO dominated industrial revolution.
FEATURING
Dr. Shiv Chopra-Ottawa, Ontario. Formerly a Doctor at Health Canada for over 30 years before he was fired.
Jim Gerritsen-Maine, USA. President of Organic Seed Growers And Trade Association (OSGATA)
DVD / 2015 / 89 minutes
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Directed by Grant Baldwin
Filmmakers and food lovers Jen and Grant dive into the issue of food waste from farm, through retail, all the way to the back of their own fridge.
We all love food. As a society, we devour countless cooking shows, culinary magazines and foodie blogs. So how could we possibly be throwing nearly 50% of it in the trash?
Filmmakers and food lovers Jen and Grant dive into the issue of waste from farm, through retail, all the way to the back of their own fridge. After catching a glimpse of the billions of dollars of good food that is tossed each year in North America, they pledge to quit grocery shopping cold turkey and survive only on foods that would otherwise be thrown away. In a nation where one in 10 people is food insecure, the images they capture of squandered groceries are both shocking and strangely compelling. But as Grant's addictive personality turns full tilt towards food rescue, the "thrill of the find" has unexpected consequences.
Featuring interviews with TED lecturer, author and activist Tristram Stuart, acclaimed author Jonathan Bloom, and food/agriculture scientist Dana Gunders, JUST EAT IT looks at our systemic obsession with expiration dates, perfect produce and portion sizes, and reveals the core of this seemingly insignificant issue that is having devastating consequences around the globe. JUST EAT IT brings farmers, retailers, inspiring organizations, and consumers to the table in a cinematic story that is equal parts education and delicious entertainment.
DVD / 2014 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 73 minutes
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Directed by Helen De Michiel
Passion, creative energy and persistence come together when Berkeley advocates and educators tackle food reform and food justice in the schools and in the neighborhoods.
How are citizens transforming local food systems? How are innovators changing the way children eat in schools? How do we talk about culture, identity and responsibility through the lens of food and health?
LUNCH LOVE COMMUNITY is a beautiful and engaging story of how a diverse group of pioneering parents and food advocates came together to tackle food reform and food justice in the schools and neighborhoods of Berkeley, CA.
Through a mosaic of twelve interconnecting short documentaries, the film explores food and education, children and health, and citizens making democratic change. This is a rich and multi-dimensional story of passion, creative energy, and idealism -- a project linking the ways we teach our children to eat and understand food to the traditional passing of powerful values from one generation to the next.
LUNCH LOVE COMMUNITY is divided into three thematic programs - Heart, Body, Mind - each containing four short films.
DVD ( Closed Captioned) / 2014 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 78 minutes
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Directed by Ian Cheney
A quest to understand the origins of this ubiquitous, spicy red chicken dish and to explore the history of Chinese-American food.
This mouthwateringly entertaining film travels the globe to unravel a captivating culinary mystery. General Tso's Chicken is a staple of Chinese-American cooking, and a ubiquitous presence on restaurant menus across the country. But just who was General Tso? And how did his chicken become emblematic of an entire national cuisine?
Director Ian Cheney journeys from Shanghai to New York to the American Midwest and beyond to uncover the origins of this iconic dish, turning up surprising revelations and a host of humorous characters along the way. Told with the verve of a good detective story, THE SEARCH FOR GENERAL TSO is as much about food as it is a tale of the American immigrant experience.
DVD / 2014 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 73 minutes
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Directed by Ted Remerowski
Examines the complex and controversial world of today's exploding organic food industry.
The last ten years have seen a phenomenal explosion in the organic food movement as it has moved from niche market to mainstream. Today, it is the fastest growing segment of the food industry attracting all of the major food corporations. THE NEW GREEN GIANTS looks at a number of these new and old organic corporations and shows how they are managing, or in some cases, failing to live up to the idealistic dreams first espoused by the back-to-the land folk of the late sixties and early seventies.
The documentary also looks at some of the bigger questions surrounding organic food. Is it really healthier? Is it truly organic? Is it possible to grow from a mom-and-pop operation to become a huge supplier of major grocery chains? Is it actually sustainable? Is it realistic to think the world can be fed organically?
The program further examines everything from stealth ownership of organic product lines by large corporations to how organic strawberries have become the focus of a major health debate and how is it that today the world's largest processor of organic food is located in a remote province of China. THE NEW GREEN GIANTS reveals the complex and controversial world of today's organic food industry.
Among those featured are: Gary Hirshberg/Stonyfield Farms, Steve Demos/Silk, Michael Potter/Eden Foods, Maggie Brown/Swanton Berry Farm, George Siemon/Organic Valley, Arran Stephens/Nature's Path, Myra Goodman/Earthbound, and Dick Peixoto/Lakeside Organic.
DVD / 2013 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 47 minutes
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By Alejandro Ramirez Anderson
Tierralismo is a beautiful film about the Alamar "organiponico" (organic cooperative farm) located outside of Havana. The organiponico was organized in the 1990's during the height of the Special Period in Cuba. Tierralismo contains interviews with many of the members of the cooperative who share their stories about how they got there and what the organiponico has contributed to their community. This Alamar organiponico is world-renowned, many specialists in organic farming, agricultural students and investigators visit the farm throughout the year.
DVD (Color) / 2013 / 49 minutes
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Directed by Maggie Beidelman
A gluten intolerant filmmaker's quest for the perfect loaf leads to unexpected discoveries about modern bread.
Michael Pollan (author of "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation") told the filmmaker, Maggie Beidelman, that her gluten intolerance could all be in her head. She half agreed with him, because the number of Americans buying into the $10.5 billion "gluten-free" industry is disturbing. There is so much more to learn about wheat - and how it has changed in just the last couple of generations - before we completely sign it off.
In this film, Ms Beideman journeys from farm to mill to table on a quest for answers about gluten intolerance and a hunt for the perfect loaf, one she can eat without getting sick. Along the way, she makes some unexpected discoveries about crucial changes to the wheat itself and how it is processed and fermented. Let's just say that bread as you know it, is not what you think.
DVD / 2013 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes
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Directed by Arjun Pandey
The people of India are faced with a choice: indulge in a Western-style fast food diet, or embrace healthy and indigenous alternatives.
Everyday, as India awakes, 1.2 billion people need to be fed. By 2050 it could be 1.7 billion. Half a billion small scale farmers supply most of India's food. Traditionally, Indians have eaten the healthy cuisine of India's 29 states, but as people move to the cities there's a growing demand for fast processed food, the so-called 'junk food' accused of causing obesity and chronic health problems.
Now India is a country on the edge of two possible futures: a future that's well fed and healthy; or a future with Western diets and Western obesity. With so many hungry people to feed, is it possible to eat in ways that are nutritionally and environmentally sustainable? What role do governments have to play in creating economic incentives for sustainable diets?
DVD / 2012 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 29 minutes
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Directed by Ernesto Cabello
In Lima, Peru, a new generation of top chefs are cooking with traditional ingredients and supporting traditional livelihoods.
The very future of food -- and farming -- is being re-imagined in a city where nobody dined out 20 years ago, where there is no national tradition of gastronomy, and where there is considerable malnutrition. But in the capital of Peru, a city not so long ago wracked by Shining Path terrorist violence, the top chefs -- men and women like Gaston Acurio, Javier Wong and Pedro Miguel Schiaffino -- believe gastronomy can achieve social justice.
Can this model really meet the challenge of providing enough food for 9.5 billion people by 2050? Scientists at Lima's agricultural university say we just can't afford to ignore the new models of industrial agriculture in favor of traditional methods. Is there room in the mix for the old and the new?
DVD / 2012 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 29 minutes
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Directed by Kum-Kum Bhavnani
The story of Mott Green and the solar-powered Grenada Chocolate Company, a farmers' and chocolate-makers' co-op, which makes organic chocolate from tree-to-bar.
NOTHING LIKE CHOCOLATE tells the poweful story of Mott Green and the Grenada Chocolate Company he founded, which is a farmers' and workers' cooperative. This tree-to-bar factory, claimed to be the smallest in the world, turns out luscious creations that are organic and ethical.
In a world saturated with industrial chocolate--often made with cocoa harvested by exploited child labor--this solar-powered workers' co-op provides a viable model for creating sustainable communities in the global South and beyond.
Also featured are Michael Pollan, Vandana Shiva, and Christian Parenti.
DVD / 2012 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 68 minutes
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Director: Monika Treut
Taiwan is known for one of the most diverse cuisines in Asia. A sumptuous exploration of the island's culinary traditions and mix of cultures, the film begins in Taipei, circles the island, and then heads inland. Along the way we enter the restaurant Shin Yeh atop the city's Taipei 101 skyscraper; are treated to a lesson on eating soup dumplings; and visit an aboriginal chef who makes bouillabaisse within a tree trunk, cooked by heated stones.
DVD-R (Taiwanese with English Subtitles) / 2012 / 83 minutes
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Directed by Shelley Lee Davies, Or Shlomi
Makes the case for a plant-based diet which is good for our bodies, good for the environment and mitigates climate change.
Where have we gone wrong? Why has the death rate from heart disease and cancer exploded in recent times? Why are the ice caps melting, the oceans dying and the forests being cut down as we produce the food necessary to support our burgeoning populations?
Against a backdrop of colorful and delicious food grown by organic farmers and prepared in the kitchens of world-famous chefs, PLANEAT for the first time brings together the ground-breaking studies of three prominent scientists who have made it their life's work to answer these questions. Dr. T. Colin Campbell in China by exploring the link between diet and disease, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's use of nutrition to treat chronically ill heart disease patients, and Professor Gidon Eshel's investigations into how our food choices contribute to global warming, wasteful land use and lifeless oceans.
PLANEAT inspires you to make the right food choices: choices that can dramatically reduce your risk of heart disease and cancer, protect our environment and make our planet sustainable while celebrating the joys of food.
DVD / 2011 / (Grades 7-9, College, Adult) / 72 minutes
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By Martin Hablesreiter and Sonja Stummerer
The sound of sausage: When a bite produces a distinct crunch, they taste particularly good. Fish sticks, on the other hand, don't make such great noises, but they can be arranged nicely in the pan. And is it merely a coincidence that bologna fits perfectly onto a slice of bread, and that when combined, they make up a popular snack?
Designers create clothes, furniture, cars and all kinds of useful items. So why not food? Food designers work on things to eat, giving them a certain style and function. They not only make sure that food and drink fill our stomachs, but also that the eating process is practical and appeals to all the senses - so that we're hungry for more.
FOOD DESIGN takes a look at the secret chambers of a major manufacturer of food, where designers and scientists are defining your favorite mouthful of tomorrow. It shows how form, color, smell, consistency, the sounds made during eating, manufacturing technique, history and stories are all aspects of food and eating that both influence food design, and are created by it.
DVD (Color) / 2009 / 52 minutes
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This DVD explains how one can modify Hispanic Foods to create heart-healthy meals, which are more like traditional foods of the region than those in the modern diet; emphasizes using more vegetables, healthier fats and portion control. It also gives a brief review of cardiovascular diseases and why it's important to modify the diet.
DVD (Region 1) / 2009 / 19 minutes
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Directed by Aaron Woolf
Classroom version of classic film about how two friends uncover the devastating impact of corn on the environment, public health and family farms.
KING CORN is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.
In KING CORN, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the East Coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat - and how we farm.
Features Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, and Earl Butz, former US Secretary of Agriculture.
This disc also includes the new companion film, BIG RIVER, on the environmental consequences of industrial agriculture.
DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2009 / (Grades 8-12, College, Adult) / 50 minutes
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Directed by Mark Dworkin, Melissa Young
An intimate look at the farmers, ranchers, and businesses that are creating a more sustainable food system in the Pacific Northwest.
Something remarkable is happening in the fields and orchards of the Pacific Northwest. After leaving the land for decades, family farmers are making a comeback. They are growing much healthier food, and more food per acre, while using less energy and water than factory farms. And most of this food is organic.
For decades Northwest agriculture was focused on a few big crops for export. But climate change and the end of cheap energy mean that each region needs to produce more of its own food and to grow it more sustainably. Good Food visits farmers, farmers' markets, distributors, stores, restaurants and public officials who are developing a more sustainable food system for all.
DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2008 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 73 minutes
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Exploring food allergy information and solutions.
I'm Not Nuts explores the misinformation many have about food allergies through the experiences of several families. The term "food allergy" has been misinterpreted as anything from stomachaches to rashes but is most often confused with the condition of food intolerance. However, food allergies are a serious medical condition and can be life-threatening. That is why having the facts is essential to healthy, quality living.
This documentary features interviews and insights from several noted medical professionals alongside representatives from worldwide food allergy support and advocacy groups. They discuss the possible causes of food allergies, the coping challenges and strategies, and the medical, emotional and social impact these allergies have on families.
I'm Not Nuts is a positive, solution-based exploration of food allergies designed to educate and inform. It shows the simple, educated steps that can be taken to effectively live with this condition so that a rich, productive life can be enjoyed.
DVD / 2008 / 84 minutes
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By Yves Billy & Richard Prost
Today more than three billion people worldwide suffer from malnutrition, including one billion who are starving. The current global economic crisis has created food shortages, skyrocketing prices, and food riots in some countries. With the world of agriculture confronting the impact of such factors as global warming, population urbanization trends, changes in eating habits, and increased use of grains for biofuels, SEEDS OF HUNGER outlines the shape of an impending global food crisis.
Filmed in Africa, China, Latin America and the U.S., SEEDS OF HUNGER examines issues involved in creating such a crisis, including the politics of food security and scarcity, declining food production and the need for increased production to meet population growth, the impact of genetically modified foods, water shortages, famine, food aid programs, the loss of crop land, and national food production, distribution and export policies.
These and other issues are explored in interviews with farmers, financial analysts and food buyers and importers worldwide, as well as Maryam Rahmanian of the Centre for Sustainable Development and Environment, Bruno Parmentier, Director of the Ecole Superieure d'Agriculture, Zhang Shihuang of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, Marc Dufumier, researcher for AgroParisTech, Amani Elobeid of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, and Stefan Tangermann of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
DVD (Color) / 2008 / 52 minutes
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Director: Jean-Paul Jaud
For the first time ever, our children are growing up less healthy than their parents. As the rate of cancer and childhood obesity climbs ever upward each year, we must ask ourselves, why is this happening? What can we do to save our children's health - and our own?
Food Beware takes a look at a small village in the mountains of France, where - in opposition to powerful economic interests - the town's mayor has declared that the school lunchroom will serve mostly local food, grown by organic methods.
Featuring interviews with children, parents, teachers, health care workers, journalists, farmers, elected officials, scientists and researchers, we learn about challenges and rewards of their stand - the abuses of industry as well as the practical solutions at hand. What will it take to save our food supply? This moving testament to one community's answer is food for thought, and a case study of a growing revolution.
DVD (French, With English Subtitles) / 2007 / 112 minutes
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By Ariana Gerstein & Monteith McCollum
Milk has long been considered a staple of the American diet, the perfect food, a pure gift of nature. This quirky and entertaining documentary examines the relationship between the popular drink and culture, revealing how milk became America's staple beverage as well as a powerful symbol of American patriotism and progress.
MILK IN THE LAND traces the history of the national consumption of milk, from the mid-19th century swill cow stables-an urban byproduct of distilleries, when Americans drank more beer than milk-to today's industrialized production of homogenized and pasteurized milk, which produces vast surpluses of dairy products stored in underground government depots.
The film surveys the role of milk throughout American history, politics and popular culture-from government price support programs, links with eugenics and political scandals, to infant feeder collector conventions and cow beauty contests. MILK IN THE LAND imaginatively blends archival footage, period graphics, animation, stop-motion and time-lapse photography, commercials, cartoons, WWII propaganda films, newspaper clippings, and apposite quotations (from Al Capone, Richard Nixon and Groucho Marx to Martin Luther and Gilbert and Sullivan), interspersed between idyllic scenes of mist-shrouded pastoral landscapes with grazing cows.
MILK IN THE LAND also features interviews with historians, sociologists, physicians, farmers, philosophers, activists, ethicists, and authors, including Melanie Dupuis (Nature's Perfect Food), Noel Foster Feliciano (Early History of American Dairying), Robin Mathers Jenkins (A Garden of Unearthly Delights), Ron Schmid (The Untold Story of Milk), Daniel Block (Hawking Milk), Robert Cohen (Milk-The Deadly Poison) and Jim Sheppard (Re-thinking Cities).
This provocative film will provide viewers with new and surprising insights into this commonplace but iconic American drink and contemporary debates over the nutritional merits of raw vs. pasteurized milk, independent vs. industrial farming techniques, seasonal vs. year-round milking, and whether our land of plenty has been transformed into a land of waste.
DVD (Color) / 2007 / 75 minutes
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Vividly reveals the dysfunctionality of the industrialized world food system and shows what world hunger has to do with us.
Close to a billion of the nearly seven billion people on Earth are starving today. But the food we are currently producing could feed 12 billion people. This is a film about food and globalization, fishermen and farmers, the flow of goods and cash flow -- a film about scarcity amid plenty.
Why doesn't a tomato taste like a tomato today? How does one explain that 200 million people in India, supplier of 80% of Switzerland's wheat, suffer from malnutrition? Why are thousands of acres of the Amazon being cleared to grow soybeans? Is water something to which the public has a basic right or, as the CEO of the world's largest food company Nestle suggests, a foodstuff with a market value?
These distressing questions are addressed as filmmaker Erwin Wagenhofer travels from Austria to Brazil, France to Romania to interview Jean Ziegler, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, CEOs and directors of the world's largest food companies, agronomists, biologists, fishermen, farmers and farmworkers.
On a daily basis, in Vienna alone, enough left-over bread to supply a small city is destroyed. The planet has enough production power to feed everyone, but 800 million people suffer from hunger. What does world hunger have to do with us?
DVD (Color, Closed Captioned, German With English Subtitles) / 2005 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 96 minutes
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Why is there is so much beauty in food? How does appearance influence taste? Explore beauty and taste, the psychology of eating, color as a guide to nutrition, the role of color in food merchandising, and the art of presenting a meal that is a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach. See how food for the "whole person" is more than the total of its vitamin and calorie counts.
Learn:
How food looks is a part of its taste. For example, studies show we judge sweet and sour by how much red and yellow we see in food.
Why kids respond to "weird colored" foods from purple catsup to blue fries.
That food is for the "whole person," more then the total of its vitamins and calorie counts.
How the food industry uses both artificial and natural colors to influence consumers.
That the same design principles used in fashion, architecture, and painting can be applied to designing a meal as well.
DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2004 / 18 minutes
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Interviews with scientists and the food industry reveal the link between obesity and sugar.
Sugar! What's not to like? It's being touted as highly addictive and the biggest contributor to the current worldwide obesity epidemic. We used to think high in fat diet was to blame so who's the real bad guy? This series takes on world-leading scientists and the food industry in an attempt to understand the truth about sugar.
Hosted by noted psychologist and New Zealand TV presenter Nigel Latta, with commentary by USC professor of childhood endocrinology Robert Lustig, author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease, the documentary presents a compelling argument that added sugars should be treated with the seriousness accorded to the negative dietary impact from fats.
The documentary features Latta as he sets out on a journey to peel back the sugar coating and see what truth lies beneath the global debate that is consuming nutrition experts.
DVD / 44 minutes
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Learn that even those organic apples or free range chicken breasts from the local health food grocery are products of extensive genetic manipulation. Learn that almost every food we eat today is shaped by centuries of "tampering with nature" that changed often inedible and even poisonous plants into tasty and nutritious foods.
Scientists see crops as building blocks for energy, chemicals, plastics, and even construction materials. The biotech revolution could change our society from one that runs on hydrocarbons to one based on carbohydrates. Explore the potential benefits and risks of bioengineered foods.
DVD / 24 minutes
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